Audubon’s folio bird prints, especially those from the Havell Edition, include his best-loved and most widely recognized work. The huge “Double Elephant Folio” of The Birds of America made Audubon’s reputation as artist and naturalist in the late 1820s, and served as his launching pad for fame in his own time and beyond into our own. Although every bird print began with an original painting (or several original paintings in some cases), Audubon considered his prints, not his paintings (many of which were missing backgrounds or otherwise unfinished) to be the final artwork, the versions that best encapsulated his desire to present the birds in their natural habitats and engaging in their regular activities. The prints were made using a variety of intaglio printing techniques (etching, aquatint, and engraving) on copper plates. The black and white prints were then hand-colored with watercolor paints. As in Audubon’s original paintings, the birds were presented at full size — what Audubon called “the size of life.”
Audubon’s 435 bird images can be grouped by size. Large images (20 percent of the total) take up most of a double elephant folio sheet while medium images (another 20 percent) include a moderate margin and small images (the final sixty percent) have very large margins.
Havells were made with copper plates that typically leave behind an impression (called the plate mark) on the sheet of paper. Plate marks are most clearly seen on full sheets with small or medium images; on large images these plate marks were often partially or completely trimmed away as part of the binding process. Prints are sometimes trimmed below the typical sizes of 37 to 39 inches x 25 to 26 inches. Such prints (which sell at a discount to full sheets) will usually have the complete plate area intact with varying amounts of margin. In some cases, however, a print may be trimmed so that some of the text — or even a small part of the image — is missing. The price should reflect such trimming.
I offer these beautiful large bird prints in many formats, including original prints (the Havell Edition produced under Audubon’s supervision or the Bien Edition produced under his son John’s supervision), restrikes (later printings made using the original copper printing plates), and modern reproductions. In the reproduction category, I also offer full-size high quality reproductions of Audubon’s original bird paintings.
